Claiming that its decision not to grant official status to an undergraduate gay and lesbian group does not violate New York City’s antidiscrimination laws, Yeshiva University (YU) has argued that it is exempted by specific clauses in these laws granting exceptions for religious institutions. A state judge, however, recently ruled that YU is not an organization with “a religious purpose,” and therefore these exemptions don’t apply. In response, the school has petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene. Michael A. Helfand explains the “bold” legal argument YU is making:
[T]he First Amendment provides religious institutions the right to engage in internal religious decision-making free from governmental interference. Often referred to as the “church autonomy doctrine,” this constitutional principle is well established in numerous legal contexts. For example, it has provided the constitutional basis for why, at times, courts are instructed to stay out of property disputes between warring factions within a church.
This doctrine is also the basis for why houses of worship have the right to hire and fire ministers free from government regulation—why, for example, Orthodox synagogues are constitutionally permitted to reject all female applicants for a rabbinic position even though doing so in any other context would be prohibited sex discrimination. In 2020, the Supreme Court described this principle as providing religious institutions a constitutional guarantee of “independence in matters of faith and doctrine and in closely linked matters of internal government.”
The boundaries of the doctrine, however, are unsettled. What kinds of religious institutions qualify for this sort of protection? And what decisions are the sort of internal religious decision-making beyond the jurisdiction of courts?
Some scholars and judges have suggested that the doctrine should only apply to cases in which solving the underlying dispute would require a court to pick a side in theological questions, but does not apply when a court is simply asked to apply a law prohibiting certain forms of discrimination.
Read more on Forward: https://forward.com/opinion/516421/illegal-discrimination-or-religious-freedom-understanding-yeshiva-universitys-case-against-the-yu-pride-alliance/